Any business that collects personal customer data on their website for any kind of processing should develop a privacy policy statement. Why go through the trouble of contacting a lawyer or a security company that specializes in private policy creation?

Facebook has a membership of over 350 million members worldwide which today makes it a prime target for spammers. In January of 2010, Facebook was the second most phished organization online. In 2009 networking company Cisco predicted that the volume of worldwide spam would increase by “30 to 40″ percent in 2010.

The FBI is investigating a security glitch that allowed Goatse Security to obtain at least 114,000 private email addresses of Apple iPad users. According to FBI spokesman Jack Pack, “The FBI is aware of these possible computer intrusions and has opened an investigation to address the potential cyber threat”.

The intrusions occurred when a group calling themselves Goatse Security was able to obtain the email addresses of people like New York Times CEO Janet Robinson, Diane Sawyer of ABC, big time Hollywood producer and director Harvey Weinstein, White House chief of staff Rahm Emamuel and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, by exploiting an AT&T security hole.

Google pointing at Microsoft’s security glitches and Microsoft pointing at Google’s security glitches (see Blogging Windows) does not help either company in the public relations battle or the sales war. Most people don’t want their personal data floating around in cyber space regardless of the reason.

A recent study by Google found that fake anti-virus programs accounted for 15% of malicious software attacks on computers. The study was presented at the Usenix Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent in 2010.

Despite numerous security applications, firewalls and encryption practices used by small and large companies to protect their data, today’s web sites provide thousands of targets for hackers who are interested in obtaining backend data to sell. Is your company’s online data open and easily available for hackers to steal?